


Prophets and Profits

by Flabbyknight



Series: Parahumans Stories [7]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flabbyknight/pseuds/Flabbyknight
Summary: Prompt: Lisa starts a cult for tax evasion purposes.
Series: Parahumans Stories [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595887
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36
Collections: The Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon





	Prophets and Profits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intodusk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intodusk/gifts).



Lisa lay slumped forward in despair over the colossal pile of tax forms covering every inch of her desk, trying not to think. Years of not thinking things through all the way had turned her into a master of turning her brain off. She had spent the last half an hour basking in the silence and pitch blackness of her office, to the point that her headache turned into merely a dull throb.

She should probably get back to work, but the 1040 forms were surprisingly comfortable pressed up against her face. Five more minutes wouldn’t hur- The door to Lisa’s room slammed open with a devastating bang, and the foul light of day invaded her sanctuary. ‘Goodbye, darkness, my old friend.’

“Lisa! Romeo is being a little a bitch! I need you to beat his ass for me!” shrieked Juliet.

Clutching her head, Lisa resisted the urge to scream obscenities at the ten-year-old nightmare made flesh. It was what the pintsized monster would have wanted her to do. To nobody’s surprise, it turned out all of Alec’s siblings were also little shits, except for dear sweet Samuel. Maybe if she didn’t move, Juliet wouldn’t see her and leave.

Juliet let out a head-splitting whine, “Lisa! Are you awake? Lisssaaa! Liiiiissssssaaaaaa! Are you listening?” What had Lisa ever done to deserve this besides all the crimes and emotional trauma she inflicted on people? Lisa involuntarily let out a groan of anguish. “Oh, good, you are awake. Romeo lit my room on fire and burned all of my things!”

“I’m sure you deserved it,” muttered Lisa giving up on the charade. “What did you do this time.”

“I only played a tiny little prank on him,” Juliet said nonchalantly. “It's nothing to dwell on, really.”

Lisa pushed herself upright, brushing off papers stuck to her face; it was hard to give menacing glares when you were lying prone. Lisa gave her best scowl and hissed, “What was your prank?”

“I feel like we are getting away from the important issues here. Like what _Romeo_ did,” replied Juliet mulishly.

Nodding to herself absently, Lisa got shakily to her feet and ambled over to one of her bookshelves, filled to the brim with blackmail on her various enemies and all her friends. Where did she keep Juliet’s notebook again? Lisa should really alphabetize all her notes one of these days. Lisa made a quiet noise of triumph as she found Juliet Vasil’s notebook lodge between That One Cashier That Looked At Me Funny That One Time and The Girl Scouts (They Know What They Did).

“Are you sure that’s your final answer?” asked Lisa as she settled back down in her chair and started flipping through her notes.

Juliet paled visibly at the sight of the book cradled in Lisa’s hands and hastily protested, “I may have lit one of his shirts on fire, but only the one! He totally overreacted!”

“Was he still wearing it at the time?”

“I fail to see why that is relevant.”

Lisa hummed to herself as she found a particularly devastating passage and cleared her throat loudly before she started reading out loud, “March sixteenth, 2008-”

“Have I ever mentioned how you’re my favorite aunt? Your penchant for self-restraint and mercy is so admirable,” said Juliet. “Also, you’re the smartest person I know, and I respect your business acumen.”

“At least try to make your lies believable,” groused Lisa. Kids these days.

“I deeply respect your ability to rip people to shreds using their personal trauma with zero hesitation. I hope one day to grow to be half as cruel as you.”

“Flatterer,” replied Lisa with a fond smile as she closed the notebook. As Juliet relaxed, she spoke up, “Two weeks shit cleaning duty with Rachel.”

Juliet opened her mouth to protest but paused as Lisa idly tapped her notebook. Pointing at the pile of paperwork, she offered, “I could do that, or I help you with whatever you’re working on?”

Lisa glanced down at her improvised pillow, and grimaced as she noticed that bits of the paperwork were ruined by tears and drool. “Please, like I need the help of a ten-year-old to do my taxes,” Lisa lied.

To be honest, she could have used all the help she could get. Who could have guessed that a sixteen-year-old that used her powers to get her GED didn’t have the necessary life skills to run a criminal organization, multiple business fronts, and an interdimensional colonization effort at the same time?

And the taxes, oh God, the taxes. If she realized how complicated interdimensional taxes and tariffs were, she would never have claimed ownership over that stupid portal. One would think that treason would get you out of paying taxes, not spending more. It was form after form after form. Every. Single. Day. She hadn’t known she could get regular and thinker headaches at the same time. It was somehow even worse than one could possibly even imagine. All her teammates were absolutely useless in helping out with the paperwork, and she didn’t trust any of Accord’s ex-goons anywhere near sensitive information.

To top it all off, Taylor, that deadbeat, had saddled her with a bunch of orphans and didn’t even send any child support.

“Wait, you pay taxes? I thought you guys were supposed to be cool,” said Juliet with a sad shake of her head.

The fact that this little shit didn’t think that she was cool offended Lisa, surprisingly. Lisa couldn’t say why she cared, but God damn it, she was cool!

“I’m cool!” protested Lisa. “I run a criminal organization.”

“So did my dad, and he was fucking lame, but even _he_ managed not to pay taxes.”

Ouch. “I also um…” Shit, she didn’t have anything else. She didn’t even have a hobby. Quick, think of a cool sexy lie! “I crunk at all the clubs?” Damn it, brain!

The look of pity that she got in return was like a stab in the heart. “You’re right; you're super cool,” Juliet said unconvincingly.

Between the headache and being pitied by a sociopath, Lisa longed for the eternal sweet release of death. She was about to blank when a thought occurred to her. “Wait, how did your dad avoid the CRA death squads?” From what Lisa had heard that their cyborg shock troopers were on par with the IRS’s.

“He just declared his organization a religious organization to get out of paying taxes,” she said with a shrug.

“I can’t imagine there would be a religion in the universe that would let your father be part of their organization,” replied Lisa.

“He just made up his own religion, declared himself a god.”

“And they let him,” she asked incredulously.

“Apparently, it's really easy to declare yourself a religion. I wasn’t really paying attention, but there were some loose guidelines that are easy to abuse. The Fallen and Haven are also tax-exempt.”

Lisa didn’t want to admit it, but the more she heard, the more appealing starting her own religion was sounding. Juliet would be a smug brat about it, and the only one allowed to be a smug brat around here was Lisa! Wait that came out wrong.

“You know,” said Lisa slowly. “I’m so glad that _I_ came up with this idea, and since I am in such a good mood, I feel like Romeo should take over your shit scooping punishment. You get me?”

“Deal!”

…

“All right gang, I called a team meeting because as an organization, we are going to have to restructure ourselves. Due to tax reasons, it has become necessary to pivot from being a privately owned company to becoming a religious intuition. Henceforth the Undersiders are known as the Temple of the Underside,” announced Lisa before changing her PowerPoint slide to the picture of a nerd.

“If anybody sees one of those vultures from the IRS come sniffing around, just pretend you love God or something. We will have to hold ‘religious services’ at an old church that I bought, but I figured we could just make it into a team movie night or something. Any questions?” Lisa braced herself for the chorus of inane objections from her asshole teammates who never appreciated everything that she did for them. 

“Personally, I think that this is an awesome idea, and I am behind it one hundred percent,” exclaimed Aisha, who was practically bouncing in her seat.

‘It’s a trap!’ her power unnecessarily howled. Shit. One didn’t need to be the greatest thinker alive, aka Lisa, to know that an endorsement from Aisha was a huge red flag, and Lisa felt she should be objecting to the plan on principle, even if it was her idea. Unfortunately, if she did that _now,_ it would look as if she were admitting she hadn’t thought of her brilliant scheme all the way through.

Thankfully, good ol’ Brian could always be counted on to be a party pooper in all situations. Giving his sister a weary look, he said, “Lisa, we’re all millionaires. Do we need to go through all this trouble just to avoid paying some taxes?”

Lisa was about to ‘concede’ the point to Brian when she froze in dismay. If she backed down, Brian would beat her in an argument, which was just _unacceptable_. Double shit. She could either admit weakness now or allow whatever disaster Aisha was brewing be unleashed upon them all.

Taking a deep breath, Lisa did the only sensible thing and said, “Brian, you dumb bitch, it’s the principle of the thing. We didn’t become villains to pay the government our hard-earned loot. We might as well be _heroes_.” Lisa spat off to the side in disgust as the word ‘heroes’ left her mouth.

Brian gave her a dumbfounded look, no doubt, amazed by her rhetoric. ‘He thinks you’re an idiot, _’_ chimed in her power.

‘Shush, you.’

Before Brian had time to recover, Lisa went on the attack. “I see you are dead set on being wrong like usual.” Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her notebook with ‘Brian’s weakness,’ making sure the title was clearly visible to everyone in the room. “I suggest you reconsider your position.”

Brian stared back at Lisa, his eyes dead and haunted, “Do you think that there is anything that you can say or do that is worse than the things that I have already experienced in the past three months?”

Suddenly feeling uncomfortable and a little guilty, Lisa hesitantly offered, “If you need to talk about what happened with Bonesaw, I’d be willing to listen.”

Shooting her a confused look, Brian shook his head. “What? No, I was talking about what Taylor does with her bugs after the two of us are done-”

“Oh, god! Oh, fuck!” Lisa screamed out as her power gave her the deets. “Who does that?!” It was moments like these that she felt blessed by her asexuality.

“Taylor,” said Brian flatly as if that explained everything, and it really did.

There was a moment of awkward silence before Aisha proudly announced, “That woman is my hero.” Of course, she was.

Lisa decided to forever repress that nugget of information for the rest of her life and continued arguing, “Look, Brian, I’m willing to go to war? Are you ready to climb into the mud, blood, and shit of the trenches with me? Huh!? Huh?! Because I’m fucking crazy and play for keeps! You wanna go?!”

Sighing, Brian said, “Fine, but I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

“Fat chance of that happening,” replied Lisa with a confidence she wasn’t feeling. She would have to fake her death in the event she had to eat crow.

Lisa braced herself glanced towards Rachel, who merely gave her a disinterested shrug. “Whatever. I don’t give a shit. Just leave my dogs out of it.” Rachel had been acting more chill lately, and honestly, it is weirding Lisa out, but she wasn’t willing to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Lisa nodded to herself happily. “Well, now that everyone so-”

“What do you mean everyone,” demanded Lily, glaring at Lisa, as she often did. “We’re right here.” Sabah gave a little awkward wave.

“To be honest, I keep forgetting that you two are Undersiders,” said Lisa. “So, let’s hear your objection then.”

“You’re the worst,” grumbled Lily.

“You’re God damn right, see all you on Sunday,” said Lisa cheerfully. Now that was all dealt with, and she had better keep an eye on Aisha to make sure that- Wait, was she thinking about? …Right, finishing up registering as a church and picking out a movie for Sunday. 

…

Lisa stared in stunned horror at the mob of randos stuffed into every nook and cranny of the church. “What the fuck,” she breathed out. Along the walls hung tapestries, each one depicting a different Undersider. The largest one portrayed Imp, and before her power even had a chance to chime in, Lisa already knew who was behind this hot moist bullshit.

“Oh, hey, Lisa,” said Aisha, popping out of nowhere, wearing an eye-searing neon robe and gigantic hat spewing fire from the top. “I’ve been warming up the congregation for you while they were waiting for your sermon.”

“Aisha, what did you do?” Lisa muttered numbly.

Aisha gave Lisa a pious smile and raised her arms towards the ceiling before proudly declaring, “I’ve been doing the good work, Lisa, the good work. Handing out leaflets and having the church renovated. People were really interested in hearing what I had to say. Did you know we’re surprisingly popular? You would think that Rachel running people out of their homes and horrible mauling people would have turned them against us, but nope, they love us.”

Lisa leaned forward and quietly hissed, “Aisha, this only was supposed to be some fake bullshit to get out of doing taxes! Why would you do this!”

Aisha let out the least sincere sounding scandalized gasp that Lisa had ever heard in her entire life before, shaking her head sadly. “I’m shocked! Shocked! That you would do something so dishonest as creating a fake religion to avoid doing paperwork.”

“I literally told you that was what I was doing when we first talked about it.”

“Look, Lisa, as the Supreme High Archbishop-Pope of the Underside, I can’t let your sinful behavior go on like this. I will have to excommunicate you from the church if you don’t step it up as the Temple’s Arch-Babbler.”

“What? You can’t kick me out of my own fake religion,” protested Lisa. This was _her_ baloney religion, and nobody was taking it away from her! “Also, who made you the Supreme High Archbishop-Pope anyway?”

“It’s all here in the Under Bible: ‘And lo, the Forgotten is the highest speaker, so that none of the flock may be overlooked.’ Imp 15:8,” quoted Aisha from a thick book that she pulled out her robes.

“When did you have time to write that?! You spend almost all your time babysitting the Heartbroken!”

“What’s the point of babysitting a horde of children if you can’t use them for slave labor? Now stop stalling and do your job as Arch-Babbler and give the sermon.”

Lisa rubbed her temples, trying to suppress her burgeoning Aisha-Headache. Alright, if she wanted to keep this ruse going, it looked like she was going to have to play along for now. She would wring Aisha’s neck later. “How am I supposed to give a sermon without accidentally contradicting whatever garbage you have been spewing to these people.” Lisa didn’t really care. At this point, she felt arguing for the sake of arguing.

“Don’t worry, it’s stated, ‘Everything wrote by my hand is the absolute truth, especially the parts that contradict themselves, for I am flighty and indecisive.’ (Tattletale 4:5)”

“Aisha.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“That’s the spirit! Gather round, everyone! The Arch-Babbler is ready to give her sermon!” Lisa lunged forward to wrap her hands around the throat of… somebody? Before she had a chance to work out what was going on, she realized that every single person in the church was staring at her expectantly.

“Speech! Speech! Speech!” someone yelled from the back of the crowd. All right, this was happening. Things were rapidly getting out of hand, and she needed to nip this in the bud before Brian showed up and rubbed this in her face. Lisa just needed to come up with something so stupid that even the most gullible buffoons would think that she was a nutcase and leave.

After a lifetime of spewing bullshit, she should be fine. “We are all gathered here today to discuss one thing, the alien ghost wizards that live among us. All of us are no doubt familiar with the fact these ‘Passengers’ are the source of powers, but many of you must be asking yourself why? For is not humanity made up of nothing but lies and sin, thus beneath their splendor?”

“We are undeserving!” shrieked the crowd, catching Lisa off guard. Damn her natural charisma! She was going to need to go even stupider to counteract how likable she was. “They forgive our crimes for they too are not without sin!” Gasps of shock echoed across the temple.

“For you see, in the distant future of 2020…” Lisa cast her eyes around the church looking for inspirations for names. “Pewlectern the Thinker led the Pulpitorians, but her brother Bunchodumass the Warrior grew jealous. Bunchodumass’s sister’s ability to do basic arithmetic offended his sensibilities, and lo, Bunchodumass crafted a rebellion, named the Ignorubians, to overthrow the rightful ruler of the Pulpitorians.” 

Angry hissing filled the room. “Death to Bunchodumass ! Death to Ignorubians!”

“This conflict continued for decades until it ended in a final cataclysmic Beyblade tournament that resulted in the death of all the Pulpitorians and Ignorubians. Also, their planet blew up moments later for unrelated reasons. The explosion launched their souls across the universe for centuries before settling on Earth, for upon it were creatures made in their own image. The horse. This is why zebras are black and white, representing their eternal conflict, and are the most sacred of beasts.” Even as she finished talking people were smearing face paint on to give themselves zebra stripes. From where they were getting the paint Lisa had no idea and she clamped down on her power so she would never find out.

“The Pulpitorians and Ignorubians continue their crusade by blessing humans to be their champions and intermediates. You might have heard PRT claim absurd things like parahumans gain powers because of brain growths, but these are lies! It doesn’t even make sense when you think about it.” Lisa paused before hastily correcting herself, “Not that I suggest that you think about things that I have been saying. Haha… anyway!”

“The reason that the PRT spreads these falsehoods is that they are, in fact, Ignorubian sympathizers! This is why the Undersiders fight them at every turn so that the truth may be known to all!” A resounding cheer filled the room at the mention of the Undersiders, which was gratifying even if it was coming from idiots.

“You may hear scientists trying to use things like facts to dispute the truth, but I know you are too smart for them. You don’t need facts; you just need to feel like things are true. Stay strong and have faith.” To her disgust, the congregation was nodding their heads and murmuring in agreement. 

“Also donate lots of money to the Temple. The more you donate, the more viable a host you become for the Pulpitorians and the more likely you’ll gain parahuman powers. Some of our naysayers claim that this temple is merely an elaborate pyramid scheme. They are, of course, wrong for reasons! What reasons you ask… anyway! Give me all your money! Muu muu ilip Pewlectern and good night!” finished Lisa as she panted for breath.

Instead of fleeing from the obvious lunatic, people were pulling out their wallets and purses before turning them out all over the floor while chanting, “Muu muu ilip Pewlectern!” As they were stepping away from the sizable pile of money, a voice in the crowd spoke up, “We should do something about the heretical PRT!”

“Let’s burn them down!”

“Burn them down! Burn them down!” howled the crowd grabbing pitchforks and torches out barrels that for some reason lined the walls, before they marched towards the doors.

“Wait!” called out Lisa, but nobody heard her over the screaming. As the last of the morons filed out, she saw Brian standing near the back, shaking his head at her. “Ach, my heart! I’m dead! Nobody, check my body!” wailed Lisa, and she stuck her tongue out and flopped to the ground.


End file.
